1. Field of the Disclosure
This disclosure relates generally to automated vehicle analysis systems and methods for analyzing loyalty behaviors of vehicle purchasers and disposers when returning to market to purchase a new vehicle and for evaluating customer loyalty.
2. Description of the Related Art
Buying an automobile or other vehicle is often a difficult proposition for many people. It is typically one of the more expensive purchases that people make. There are many different vehicles available, each having slightly different features, and prospective purchasers have numerous factors to take into account. Convincing individuals to buy particular automobiles is thus a very expensive and difficult proposition. Understanding when and how purchasers select vehicles for purchase and their loyalty and purchase migration patterns, trends, and behavior can help define marketing strategies and direct limited marketing funds to areas most likely to provide a return on investment.
Manufacturers and dealerships have a difficult job not only in capturing new customers, but in maintaining older customers for repeat business. Information relating to various indications of purchaser loyalty, such as brand or manufacturer loyalty, is thus helpful in deciding when, where, and how marketing dollars should be spent to improve loyalty strategies and campaigns, as well as in identifying which customers or potential customers should be targeted. Such information can also help in a variety of other ways, such as in evaluating how or why sales were lost, for example. To date, customer loyalty evaluation solutions have been imperfect, only providing information related to garaged vehicles present during the same time window of study as the purchased vehicle and forcing one-to-one purchase correlations to owned/garaged vehicles that do not reflect the complexity of most vehicle purchase decisions. With more and more households owning more than one vehicle at a time, and often purchasing and discarding vehicles within limited time frames, it is useful to capture the greater complexities of vehicle purchasing.